Month: December 2017

5 best free apps for startups for 2018

Here is a countdown of the top must-have apps that startups should have on their phones or computers to start 2018 on the right foot. As a startup in this digital age, you can bet that there are very creative solutions out there to help savvy entrepreneurs save time, money, or headache. Here are our top picks.

Vidyard is a Google Chrome extension that captures videos and uploads it for you. From there, you can share the link to the video or upload it directly into gmail email or your Youtube channel. With just one click, you can capture video and audio on what is happening on your screen. You do need strong internet to in order for this to work. As a technology software startup, we mainly use this for demonstrations to clients to showing bugs to the development team.

A video tells a better story about what the user is seeing or should be seeing than screenshots with text. To see an example of how it works, here is an example of a video we made recently for a prospective startup customer: https://share.vidyard.com/watch/Qwm9VwRj5udCNZ74Evwd86

This is a digital way to sign contracts. You can use the web version for free at www.hellosign.com. The neat thing about this fan favourite is that you can sign your own signature and email it to others to sign too within a few clicks. Not only do we not have to find an old school printer somewhere in the city…but it saves us a lot of time and money! Make sure this is marked down as one of your must have’s. Personally, I use the web version to do this.

Paperspan is a very interesting app that instantly downloads webpages/articles to save offline and reads it out loud to you later. This is particularly useful when I was flying a lot this year from Montreal to Vancouver to run beta tests with incubators for our startup success tool. This came in handy because I got to read up on different Facebook campaigns, eBooks, etc..It is perfect to catch up on reading and research during transport such as in airplanes, subways, or even just walking.

Voicealoud is a similar app that reads out loud but you require internet.

That means that these audio apps are the ultimate “time saving” apps especially for people who don’t like read. I put it on the startup list because we have to learn so much in such a short time. We put on many hats during the day. Any time we want to find research on best practices can be done here.

A lot of first time entrepreneurs know they should use social media but don’t know how. They either don’t know what content to put, when to publish or what channels would be most effective. Crowdfire has a long free trial (about 100 posts) that helps you post cross Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. It can include other mediums as a part of the premium paid package. We used this and saw instant success that helped VenturX grow:

It also teaches users how to do it and what to look for. For example, the app encourages users to like similar topics, when to repost your latest Youtube video or Medium blog post, etc.. It helped us maximize exposure to our startup fans and it drove traffic to our website.

One thing that really stood out about Crowdfire was how user-friendly it was. They had a unique chatbox technology combined with their AI algorithm to maximize its effective interaction with the users. Even though VenturX used it for B2B, I expected it would be even more successful for B2C startup businesses.

Welcome to the “Tinder for LinkedIn.” You can swipe left and right on people’s profile and get matched. It is especially great for B2B businesses like VenturXbecause it targets keywords and job titles. For example, VenturX would interested in these job titles: “CEO, Founder, or investor” and we scroll through 20 daily picks with those related job titles as close to our geographical area as possible. Just like the hot in market dating mobile applications, you can only talk to each other when you match. Also, users can get suggestions such as “ask them for a coffee meeting” in order to encourage more offline meetings.

I loved this app so much that I tweeted a customer testimonial video to them directly.

This is how you know your work is really changing the market.

The forgotten app of 2018:

Saying goodbye to Hunter.io app.

Hunter.io

This Google Chrome extension was a stellar business development assistant that helps you search email addresses on Linkedin. They had to shut down or got acquired unfortunately. Otherwise, this would be on the list of top 5 too.

So there you have it! You are well on your way to boost your startup with a bang in 2018!